Fantasy sports leagues represent a rapidly growing sports-related gaming industry. The attraction is that statistics taken from the performance of selected athletes enable friends, colleagues, and strangers to pit their sports knowledge against one another with the victor ultimately being determined by the real play of the athletes. The purpose of fantasy leagues is not to create some simulation in a futile effort to determine whether the 1972 Dolphins could beat the 1985 Bears. Rather, the draw to fantasy leagues is the desire to test one's skill at recognizing and predicting athletic talent, game-day mismatches, and breakout performances. In short, the draw is to be a virtual general manager of a sports team.
The origin of fantasy sports leagues is largely considered the brainchild of Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach. Evidently, sometime in the early 1960s, Winkenbach, a partner in the American Football League (AFL) franchise known as the Oakland Raiders, hatched the concept while lodging at the Milford Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, N.Y. Participating in Winkenbach's original “league” were mostly other AFL executive types along with a few local area sportswriters and Raiders season ticket holders. Winkenbach's league was later dubbed by its members as The Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL) and featured a format that has come to be known as “head to head.”
Much like modern day fantasy leagues, GOPPPL “franchise owners” held a mock draft and selected a number of “skill position” players who were active on various AFL squads. The “drafted” players represented the teams that would be managed over the course of the season by the respective franchise owners. Each week, the franchise owners would submit their mock rosters of “starters” prior to the weekend games and then proceed to root for their players without regard for the actual teams on which the players played. The statistical performances of the players translated into points for the GOPPPL franchise owners via a predetermined point system (so many points for a touchdown, so many for a reception, etc.). At the end of the games, the commissioner of the league (not surprisingly, it was Winkenbach) began the tedious process of compiling the statistics and tallying the corresponding points. The “head-to-head” winner of each week's match-ups between pairs of teams was declared based on the totals of these points. Ultimately, the franchise owner whose team had the best record at the end of the football season was the league champion.
From there, the phenomenon grew. Winkenbach's concept caught on, and variations of it spread to other sports. In the early 1980s, baseball fantasy leagues spawned the “rotisserie” format. In a fantasy league with a rotisserie format, the franchise owners participating in the league do not engage in “head-to-head” match-ups with a “win” or “loss” being assigned to their record after a contest. Rather, in a rotisserie format, the statistics for the designated players are totaled over the course of the season with points usually being assigned based on a player's actual statistical standings during the season. For instance, a specified number of points may be awarded if a franchise owner's player ranked first in slugging percentage. Alternatively, points in a rotisserie format may be awarded based on a pitcher's actual earned run average (ERA) instead of where that pitcher ranks against his peers for the ERA statistic. Yet another variation on the rotisserie format may award points based on a player's rank for a given statistic only as it relates to the same statistic for other players in the fantasy league.
Regardless, the winner of a rotisserie-style fantasy league is ultimately determined by the totality of points his team amasses by the end of the season. Because of the sheer number of games in a baseball season, along with the varying numbers of games played in a given week, the rotisserie format is well suited for fantasy baseball league participants as it minimizes the time commitment of participating. In short, at the end of the season the points are totaled, and a winner crowned.
While “head-to-head” and “rotisserie” fantasy league formats are the most common, other formats have developed as fantasy sports have gained in popularity. For instance, “Pick 'Em” leagues don't require the drafting of a fantasy team. Rather, a “Pick 'Em” league participant has to pick only winners of actual games in head-to-head match-ups of real sports teams over the course of a season. Wins and losses are scored according to the league rules and may even be weighted according to a participant's “confidence level” when he predicted a winner.
Yet another popular format is known as a “Salary Cap” league. A “Salary Cap” league arms its franchise owners with virtual bank accounts and assigns players in the selection pool a virtual monetary value. The goal is to draft and manage the most statistically prolific fantasy team possible while staying within the virtual budget. Scoring for “Salary Cap” leagues may follow a head-to-head, rotisserie, or other format. Regardless of the scoring formula, the real challenge in a “Salary Cap” fantasy league is to work within the budget.
When Winkenbach's league started in the 1960s, all statistical analysis and scoring had to be done manually. League management, therefore, was a tedious task best left to the most dedicated and detail-oriented sports fanatic in the league (usually the “commissioner”). Leagues heavily relied on periodicals, actual game-day accounts, radio and television broadcasts, and other means of gathering data in order to assign scores to the fantasy teams. Because the scoring process was so mentally daunting and time consuming, only the most serious sports fans ever joined a league. Further, the depth of statistics and complexity of a scoring system were necessarily limited in deference to practicality. All of the factors that kept fantasy sports an experience for only the most dedicated fan evaporated with the advent of the Internet.
By the late 1990s, the Internet had become largely available to the masses, and fantasy sports blossomed accordingly. With computers to access game day statistics, facilitate research on players, automate drafts, manage and post team rosters, calculate scores, and provide remote access for league participants, the fantasy sports experience became realistically available to even the most casual fan. Because of the Internet, the need for manual data compilation no longer existed. Fantasy sports games encompassing every major sport, variation of format, and scoring twist evolved practically overnight and continue to spawn now, a decade later.
Even with the almost countless variations of fantasy sports leagues available today, however, there is at least one common denominator among them all. The common factor in all fantasy sports leagues to date, regardless of sport, level of sport, format, or scoring system, is that only current, active athletes in the selected sport are eligible to be “drafted” by fantasy league owners. Consequently, only the statistics that will be generated by current, active players in a game yet to be played can be translated into points for a fantasy team owner or league participant. Therefore, what is needed in the art is a system and method to integrate statistics already generated by the performances of former athletes with statistics yet to be generated by current, active athletes.